The British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilization and includes books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Up to 10 million people visit the British Library website - www.bl.uk - every year where they can view up to 4 million digitized collection items and over 40 million pages.

Terms of use

Copyright status of the manuscript and unpublished Materials: The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (as amended) states that unpublished literary and artistic works remain in copyright in the UK until at least 31 December 2039. Therefore important parts of the library’s collection remain in copyright, including very old manuscripts. However for unpublished material created many centuries ago and in the public domain in most other countries, the Library believes this material to be very unlikely to offend anyone. As an institution whose role it is to support access to knowledge, we have therefore taken the decision to release certain digitised images technically still in copyright in the UK under the Public Domain Mark.

Events at The British Library

Exhibition

Shakespeare in Ten Acts

April 15—September 06, 2016

To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, this exhibition will reveal ten performances that have made Shakespeare the cultural icon he is today. It is often said that Shakespeare’s work is universal, but this is to ignore the fact that his plays have been constantly reinvented to suit the times.

The tenth edition of Venus and Adonis, like the eighth and ninth, bears an imprint claiming the book was printed for William Leake in 1602; however, it seems that it was not printed for Leake until 1610.

The poet and courtier Sir John Harington left behind tantalizing lists of plays written by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Heywood, and others. Around 1609 he compiled two lists of play quartos almost certainly in his personal collection.

This is the only surviving copy of The Anuals of great Brittaine, a 1611 reissue of Robert Chester’s 1601 Loves Martyr, which included the Shakespeare poem now known as “The Phoenix and the Turtle.” The Anuals is made up of sheets from the 1601 edition